Book

Pelican girls : a novel / Julia Sixtine Marie Malye.

ISBN: 9780063299757
ISBN: 0063299755
Physical Description: 354 pages : map ; 24 cm
Edition: First edition.
Publisher: New York : Harper, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers, 2024.
Copyright: &copy;2024

Summary:

Paris, 1720. La Salpêtrière hospital is in crisis: too many occupants, not enough beds. Halfway across the world, France's colony in the wilds of North America has space to spare and needs families to fill it. So the director of the hospital rounds up nearly a hundred female “volunteers” of childbearing age--orphans, prisoners, and mental patients--to be shipped to New Orleans. Among this group are three unlikely friends: a sharp-tongued twelve-year old orphan, a mute madwoman, and an accused abortionist. Charlotte, Pétronille, and Geneviève, along with the dozens of other women aboard La Baleine, have no knowledge of what lies ahead and no control over their futures. Strangers brought together by fate, these brave and fierce young women will face extraordinary adversity--pirates, slavedrivers, sickness, war--but also the private trauma of heartbreak and unrequited love, children born and lost, cruelty and unexpected pleasure, and a friendship forged in fire that will sustain through the years. -- Provided by publisher.